me
library where its want of the writer's name upon the title page may have
kept it from making its reappearance. Though it bore no name, yet
Boswell, when writing to Temple over it, speaks of 'My publisher
Wilkie,' and he seems to have been afraid that the copy sent by him
should fall into the hands of strangers. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_
for July 1767, however, it is reviewed, but the value of the shilling
booklet does not seem to have impressed the critic. 'The Spanish Tale,'
he says, 'supposes the contests to be finally determined in favour of
_Don Ferdinand_ against the family of Ardivoso--but the real question is
still in dispute, having been removed by appeal to the House of Lords.
The pamphlet is zealously but feebly written: the author in some places
affects the sublime, and in some the pathetic; but these are the least
tolerable parts of his performance.' Thus airily does the reviewer
dismiss Bozzy's determined effort to rouse, as he imagined, the parental
and sympathetical feelings, and it is clear at least that, however much
its recovery would add to the stock of harmless pleasure among
professed Boswellians and collectors, its loss cannot be said to have
'eclipsed the gaiety of nations.'

During the course of the trial the _Tour in Corsica_ had been preparing.
Early in 1768 it was issued from the celebrated press of Robert and
Andrew Foulis in Glasgow, and the publishers were the Dillys in the
Poultry, London, who were to act for him in all his literary
undertakings to the end of his life. It was a lull in the storm of the
Douglas crisis, and the old judge, eager enough to see his son
associated with anything rational, was not unpleased with its appearing
as a pledge of better things. 'Jamie,' he admitted, 'had taen a toot on
a new horn.' The account of Corsica which had been made up from various
sources of information ran to two hundred and thirty-nine pages; but the
real interest of the volume attaches to the _Journal_ which occupies a
hundred and twenty. The translations from Seneca were done by Thomas
Day, then very young, the author of _Sandford and Merton_, and the
creator of that constellation of excellence, Mr Barlow, whose connection
in any degree with Boswell is almost provocative of a smile. The
peculiar orthography of the writer is defended in the preface, for he
allows himself not only such divergencies as 'tremenduous,' 'authour,'
'ambassadour,' but also 'authentick' and 'panegyrick.' The